


Compassion

by DeCarabas



Series: Fugitives Together [42]
Category: Dragon Age II
Genre: Act 3, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-07
Updated: 2017-12-07
Packaged: 2019-02-11 20:44:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 635
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12943506
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DeCarabas/pseuds/DeCarabas
Summary: Written for tumblr's dahalloween's day for spirits and possession. The things that Anders has wanted to say to Justice, or maybe it's the other way around.





	Compassion

Justice looks exactly the way Anders remembers him. Clouded eyes. Teeth showing through a wound in Kristoff’s skin that Anders had yet to sew closed. And Anders feels like they’ve been talking like this for a while now, here in the familiar barracks at Vigil’s Keep.

Anders leans back in a chair balanced precariously on two legs, and it all feels so natural that for a moment he’s convinced that’s really his old friend sitting across the table from him. Yes, it’s a dream, of course it’s a dream, but there’s this wild hope that maybe in the Fade, somehow, possibly—

_But if that’s Justice over there, then what does that make me?_

He allows himself one more moment. Then he has to spoil the illusion. “You’re not him.”

What he’s talking to is Compassion. He feels certain of it now, in the way of dreams, seeing one thing and knowing it’s something else, like dreams of the Circle where for some reason it looks just like Hightown, or dreams of Hawke as a templar-eating tiger.

“I am sorry,” says the spirit with Justice’s face. _My face. Kristoff’s face. Whatever._

It might be the same compassion spirit who’d helped him in the clinic that day, though he wouldn’t swear to it. Anders watches the spirit and lets his chair tilt back until it bumps against the wall. “For what? Not being Justice?”

Or for pretending to be Justice. But there’s no point in resenting a spirit for taking on a role from his memories. Like getting angry at the wind for blowing.

“For everything that you have given up. For everything that… I did not understand.” Not-Justice does an excellent impression of Justice’s frustration, the look on his face he used to get whenever the mortal world left him speechless, confusing and contradictory place that it was. “And yet if we could do it over again, I would change nothing. For that most of all, I am sorry, my friend.”

The spirit is only saying the things that it’s plucked out of his head.

There’s a map of the Deep Roads spread out on the table between them. Amgarrak Thaig. This dream must be drawing on his memories from before the Commander left. Before Rolan and the templars, before giving Pounce away, before everything else. Long before he’d started lying to Hawke about trying to separate, and the spirit must have seen that particular hurt and decided it needed picking at.

Not-Justice is silent until Anders meets his eyes again.

“Are you trying to heal me?” Anders asks with a smile.

“There were so many things you wanted to say to him,” Compassion says. And Anders isn’t sure which _you_ and which _him_ it means. True either way. But his thoughts are Justice’s thoughts are Anders’ thoughts, and even if they really could speak like they used to, face to face like this, anything he could say would be redundant anyway. 

He shouldn’t be able to miss someone when they’re never apart.

“And now you’ve said them for me, is that it? Huh. You picked the wrong appearance. You should have looked like me for that speech.” He holds up a hand to forestall it. “Though don’t, please. I… thank you. And… I’m sorry.”

Directed not at the spirit but at this memory of the old Justice with his clouded eyes, and this dream version of the old Anders with his fine robes that in the waking world have long since been cut up for scraps, and neither of them are real but they’re here in front of him all the same, and he had to say it while he had the chance.

_And yet I wouldn't go back even if I could, and for that most of all, I am so sorry, my friend.  
_


End file.
